OceanBank trials end in death sentence

OceanBank’s former executives have been given the stiffest punishments in Vietnamese law.

Nguyen Xuan Son (left) faces the death penalty and Ha Van Tham (right) a life sentence

This morning, the jury of the Hanoi’s People’s Court pronounced the strictest punishments in the OceanBank trials, giving the life sentence to former chairman Ha Van Tham starting from October 24, 2017, and the death sentence to former general director Nguyen Xuan Son.

The sentences were earlier proposed in the middle of this month by the Hanoi People’s Procuracy. Over the past two weeks, the cases and punishments have been thoroughly discussed by the jury.

According to the procuracy, OceanBank has seen numerous violations of special gravity regarding the mobilisation of deposits, and mismanagement of money sourced from the bank’s excessive interest rates. Tham and Son were found to have committed the most serious violations.

Son, who served as chairman of state-owned oil and gas group PetroVietnam from 2014 until he was arrested in 2015, was charged with “embezzlement, abuse of power, and deliberately violating state regulations on economic management.”

Son, who had held many executive positions at PetroVietnam since 2003 and served as CEO of OceanBank during 2008-2010, was accused of embezzling about $11 million from the bank. During his term in office, PetroVietnam was a major shareholder of the bank.

Meanwhile, Tham faced the same charges, with the additional “breaking regulations on lending activities at credit institutions.”

According to the Procuracy’s indictment, in 2012, Tham approved a VND500-billion ($22.72 million) loan to Pham Cong Danh, former chairman of Vietnam Construction Bank, via a property firm without properly securing collateral. The Ho Chi Minh City-based company later defaulted on the loan. Danh is facing 17 years in jail.

During 2010-2014, Tham and other bank officials also offered deposit rates above those set by the State Bank of Vietnam to many customers, including PetroVietnam, causing a financial loss of nearly VND1.6 trillion ($72.73 million) in total.

Over 50,000 individuals and nearly 400 organisations, including PetroVietnam subsidiaries and many state-owned units, benefited from the interest rates, according to prosecutors.

The procuracy has also proposed different durations of imprisonment for many other OceanBank officers (see box for details).

The OceanBank trial kicked off in Hanoi on August 28 and was scheduled to last 20 days. It is considered the biggest in Vietnam’s history, involving about 750 attendants and 51 bankers and businesspeople.

OceanBank was founded in 1993 with a 20 per cent stake from Ocean Group, which holds investments in a variety of sectors, such as hospitality, securities, media, and retail.

List of the defendants with penalties

1. Ha Van Tham (former chairman of OceanBank): Life sentence

2. Nguyen Xuan Son (former general director of OceanBank): Death sentence